- Samsung unveils HDR10+ Adaptive next-gen HDR coming in 2026
- It shares many similarities with Dolby Vision 2’s new features
- Amazon Prime Video will support it, but only simulations have been shown so far
Samsung has unveiled HDR10+ Advanced, its next-generation HDR format that will compete with Dolby Vision 2 to offer even better images on the best TVs of the future.
It includes some upgrades that directly match what Dolby Vision 2 offers, but also some unique features – like Dolby’s new tools, they’re aimed at improving picture quality for newer technology that’s become more common since the current HDR formats were conceived.
There are six key upgrade areas in HDR10+ Advanced, as reported by regular TechRadar contributor John Archer at Forbes:
- HDR10+ Light
- HDR10+ genre
- HDR10+ Intelligent FRC
- HDR10+ Intelligent Gaming
- HDR10+ local tone mapping
- Advanced color control
HDR10+ Light
HDR10+ Bright is the equivalent of Dolby Vision 2’s ‘bi-direction tone mapping’, and it’s technology to make HDR look more accurate and rich on today’s super-bright TVs – and especially on future RGB mini-LED TVs, according to our friends at What Hi-Fi?, who saw a simulated demo of what this feature is expected to look like.
Here’s the problem HDR10+ Bright is meant to solve: most movies today are mastered to a maximum brightness of 1,000 nits in their home release. When TVs have a brightness below 1,000 nits (as the best OLED TVs did until a few years ago, and as many cheap TVs do today), the different brightness levels of HDR images are ‘toned down’ by Dolby Vision and HDR10+, so that the image still looks accurate, just with a more limited range of brightness and darkness than the original mastered version does.
But what if a TV’s brightness is over 1,000 nits, as so many of the best mini-LED TVs today are, including Samsung’s? Well, it’s been more of a wild west. It also requires tone mapping, but in the other direction, so that the dynamic range is expanded rather than compressed. Whether or not this remains accurate has depended on the TV’s processing – but HDR10+ Bright aims to add some consistent accuracy to brighter TVs.
Samsung plans to launch its new ‘Micro RGB’ TVs in 2026 – which we’ve had a preview of – which should deliver really high brightness and richer colours, so this technology seems tailor-made for that.
HDR10+ genre
This promises to apply specific image enhancements based on the type of thing you’re watching – I’m assuming this means dark crime dramas will focus on preserving shadow detail, while sports will care less about contrast and more about bright, vivid tones.
HDR10+ Intelligent FRC
This is similar to the Authentic Motion feature in Dolby Vision 2 that I saw in action earlier this year. The idea here is that instead of motion smoothing simply being active or inactive at different strength levels, creators can tell the TV (using data embedded in the video) how strong the motion smoothing should be – and it can be changed on a shot-by-shot basis.
So a silent drama film should require very little motion smoothing so that everything generally looks natural. But if there’s suddenly a pan across a landscape, which is the sort of thing that’s likely to cause a lot of visible judder in a movie – then the motion smoothing can be increased for a short period of time so that the film always looks as it was intended in cinemas (where the lower brightness and projection technology means that judder is usually not visible).
Interestingly, it looks like this can also be adjusted depending on the lighting conditions – judder is less noticeable on dimmer screens, so if you’re watching in a dark room with the brightness not turned up as high, the system may not use such a strong smoothing setting.
HDR10+ Intelligent Gaming
This is a new system for adjusting tone mapping in real time based on ambient lighting to preserve detail in an image, but specifically in a way that works well for cloud gaming services – as long as the cloud gaming service supports HDR10+ Advanced. For example, it can mean better visibility in very dark areas of the screen, which is always useful for gaming.
Which cloud gaming services will support it? It remains to be seen, but Nvidia has supported the current HDR10+ gaming standard, so there’s a good chance GeForce Now will be there.
HDR10+ local tone mapping
This apparently means that the image can be analyzed by TVs in a much more precise way to determine how best to apply local dimming of a backlight in a mini LED TV, potentially meaning better contrast and less blooming from light to dark areas, depending on the physical capabilities of the TV.
Advanced color control
This one is a little vague, but definitely intriguing. According to Forbes, this means creators can send “more accurate color data to TVs to produce more accurate color performance”. I don’t know exactly what that will mean, but if it’s the color equivalent of tone mapping – meaning that TVs can adjust how they handle colors based on their own capabilities, ensuring that what you see is what the creator intended – then it could be very interesting.
When is HDR10+ Advanced coming and who will support it?
So far, we know that Samsung plans to bring the technology to its future TVs and that Amazon Prime Video will support it on its streaming platform.
Samsung is apparently focusing on bringing HDR10+ Advanced to its 2026 TVs, which will likely be announced at CES 2026 and will launch this spring. I don’t yet have information from other TV manufacturers or if current Samsung TVs might be updated to support it, but I’ll try to find out more.
It’s a bit surprising, though, that Samsung has only shown people simulated footage of what it’s expected to look like so far – when I saw Dolby Vision 2, I was told that the technology was actually running on real TVs with real footage, and that was a few months ago.
It makes me a little worried if HDR10+ Advanced will meet this expected deadline… but then again, what good is Dolby Vision 2 being first if there’s no content? Right now it only has Canal+ on board publicly, so if HDR10+ Advanced has big Prime Video shows ready from the start, it has an advantage.
I suppose this means that CES 2026 – the Consumer Electronics Show held annually in Las Vegas in January – will be a real battle for the HDR formats, as well as being a big battle with RGB-backlit TVs.
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